Justin Eichorn, a GOP Minnesota senator who was – until Thursday – the highest-ranking elected official to be arrested that day in Bloomington, Minnesota. Eichorn, 40, was charged in federal court on Wednesday with attempted coercion and enticement of a minor. The charges are based on an accused incident where he lured a 17-year-old girl through online trafficking ads.
Eichorn was arrested by law enforcement on Tuesday during a sex sting police conducted in Bloomington. Her agency’s operation included putting ads on websites known to facilitate human trafficking and creating fake profiles as young women, complete with photographs. Then on March 11, Eichorn was reportedly the first responder to an ad. Then he asked how much the girl would charge for that night.
Eichorn wrote to the undercover officer posing as a teenage girl. Over the course of their exchanges, he solicited from her a nude photograph in which she was wearing only a bra and underwear, with two fingers raised. Eichorn lustily requested information on meeting logistics. She had all kinds of abbreviations, like qv for quick visit and hhr for half hour, and she would ask about my billables.
"as long as your legal age I am fine," Eichorn allegedly stated when the undercover officer mentioned the girl's age.
In another exchange, the officer, maintaining the pretense of being a young woman, said:
"I just wanna have fun and no drama babe," and added, "like I said don’t want any drama but wanna be upfront cause one guy got hella mad at me."
In Eichorn’s vehicle, upon his arrest, authorities found two iPhones, an unopened Trojan condom and $129 in cash. These things only added to the case against him. The arrest and subsequent prosecution brought tremendous political pressure to bear on Eichorn.
Prior to his resignation, Eichorn was a driving force as one of five authors behind a controversial autocycles bill. This bill, introduced just a few days earlier, sought to codify “Trump derangement syndrome” as an official mental illness. He stepped down just before his fellow state senate colleagues were set to vote on expelling him. The timing was important and really caught a lot of people off guard.